Aerial delivery of cargo units, i.e. dropping of cargo from a flying aircraft, by parachutes is one way of providing supply in areas that are cut-off from ground supply and lack landing areas for aircraft. Contrary to what is implied by the term “drop”, cargo units have to be pulled out of the aircraft, i.e. extracted from the aircraft, with the correct extraction velocity to ensure that the cargo units will leave the cargo bay of the aircraft in a defined manner. To generate a sufficiently high extraction velocity, cargo units are pulled out of the cargo bay of the aircraft by an extraction parachute.
While the cargo units are pulled out of the cargo bay they may get jammed, i.e., the cargo units are stuck and cannot move further. In this case the extraction parachute has to be disconnected or detached from the cargo unit. To this end present aerial delivery systems employ a pyrotechnic mechanism which is arranged at the interface between the extraction parachute and the cargo unit. When the cargo unit has not yet moved from its initial position or has not been pulled further away than approximately 0.5 m, a cargo operator or loadmaster can activate the pyrotechnic mechanism from his workstation. Thereby, an explosive charge is set off detaching the extraction parachute from the cargo unit.
If the cargo unit has already moved more than approximately 0.5 m away from its initial position when the cargo unit jams, the pyrotechnic mechanism cannot be activated anymore. For detaching the extraction parachute from the cargo unit the loadmaster has to manually cut the connection between the extraction parachute and the cargo unit. Thus, the loadmaster has to leave his workstation and move through the open cargo bay to the jammed cargo unit which may take considerable time keeping in mind that the cargo door and/or cargo ramp of the cargo bay is open and the size of today's cargo aircraft.